The London restaurant scene, once a gastronomic punchline, has never been more diverse or delicious. That being said, picking a London restaurant can be an anxiety-inducing, time-consuming task (and that’s before you even get to securing a table). That’s why we pulled together a comprehensive list of the capital's must-try spots, spread across a broad price range. We want you to treat it like a culinary roadmap of the capital’s best new openings, local favourites and famed institutions. Tick them all off to get a hearty taste of the city at its best.
(And while you're here, check out our weekly restaurant recommendation via Esquire's weekly newsletter, The Brief).
Brunswick House
- Cuisine: Modern European
- Location: Vauxhall (30 Wandsworth Road, SW8 2LG)
- Price: ££
- Brunswick House reservations
If there is a more charming restaurant in London, we would be hard pressed to name it. Jackson Boxer's stalwart, housed in a Georgian mansion in Nine Elms around which a forest of skyscrapers has grown, manages to be an eccentric oasis from the cold steel of the city. It doesn't hurt that it shares premises with the architectural salvage company Lassco, which has no doubt been an invaluable source of the historic nicknacks and etchings and chandeliers that epitomise its maximalist decor. As with his other restaurants, including Dove, Taq, and, most recently Vesper, Boxer has a god-given ability to divine what customers actually want to eat. Current menu items include a whole Suffolk chicken with Dorset clams, and a wood-fired Hereford wing rib with beer mustard: things that are indubitably, unmistakably – sorry, but there's no other word for it – tasty.
Acre
- Cuisine: Modern European
- Location: Notting Hill (60 Golborne Road, W10 5PR)
- Price: ££
- Acre reservations
Thomas Straker’s Acre – just a few steps along the Golborne Road from the chef’s first self-titled restaurant – is, from the outside, unassuming. In the summer, there’s adorable outdoor seating as well as a fun bar for coffee and drinks (pass by on a Sunday morning and gawp at the running clubs hanging outside). Inside this “deli”, though, there’s a wealth of well-designed luxury: crimson accents, comfortable seating (it matters!), and the backlit bar is especially pleasing. On a recent lunch visit, Esquire tucked into raw tuna tostada, a duck ragu pappardelle and mussels served with ’nduja. Quite the flavour combination but it all worked beautifully. Damn good chocolate mousse for pudding, and a very full wine list to boot. I was so full I considered joining a running club.
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Labombe by Trivet
- Cuisine: Modern European
- Location: Mayfair (19 Old Park Lane, W1K 1LB)
- Price: £££
- Labombe by Trivet reservations
We wouldn’t always relish the thought of a hotel restaurant – so often they're forced to cater to the nuked, carb-craving tastebuds of the jet-lagged – so we were thrilled to see just what levels of cooking Labombe by Trivet is bringing the stretch of grand hotels along Old Park Lane. Housed on the ground floor of the Como Metropolitan, but accessible directly from the street, this sister restaurant to Trivet in London Bridge, run by chef Jonny Lake and sommelier Isa Bal, has a refined, laidback atmosphere and food that brings the flair and the fun (crème caramel with Campari caramel anyone?). As with Trivet, which has two Michelin stars, there’s ambition here, and we won't be surprised to see Labombe by Trivet getting such nods of its own in the future.
Burro
- Cuisine: Italian
- Location: Covent Garden (2 Floral Court, Floral Street, WC2E 9FB)
- Price: ££
- Burro reservations
Burro is the first standalone restaurant from Conor Gadd, co-founder of Islington favourite Trullo. And it’s a very nice space indeed: there’s a very sexy bar and a smart dining area. Sometimes, in this hectic city, you just need to eat spaghetti in a nice room. It’s an excellent addition to Covent Garden, not exactly an area brimming with reliable restaurants (although it does not have Simpson's too, see below). We started, after a recommendation from a very kind waiter, with two Marsala Martinis. For food we moved onto anchovies (sometimes you want a classic) and asparagus with black pig pancetta (both fresh and indulgent). Then we had another round of Marsala Martinis. We continued with brill served with courgette scapece (kind of like fried vegetable coins) and one hell of a pasta dish: tagliarini with chopped mussels, lemon and parsley. It’s both simple and sophisticated, exactly the sort of thing you want to eat when you’re two drinks in. To finish, you should probably have the tiramisu doughnuts, which even a sweet-tooth denier might enjoy.
Simpson’s in the Strand
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Covent Garden (100 Strand, WC2R 0EW)
- Price: ££
- Simpson’s in the Strand reservations
It takes a restaurateur of Jeremy King’s ambition and experience to take on something like Simpson's in the Strand, the historic London dining institution first set up as a restaurant in 1848, which withstood two World Wars before being shuttered by Covid in 2020. But it was a natural fit for his expanding restaurant group, which also includes Arlington and The Park, and are known for their combination of easy elegance and timelessness. There is of course roast beef on the menu – served from Simpson’s iconic trolley – as well as a pie of the day, an extensive fish menu and cold cuts. It’s grand, it’s comforting, and, as you would expect, it is effortlessly chic.
The French House
- Cuisine: French-British
- Location: Soho (49 Dean Street, W1D 5BG)
- Price: ££
- The French House reservations
The scruffy Dean Street boozer is perhaps best known for its old-Soho charm, cosy bar, and insistence on serving drinks by the half-pint. But upstairs you’ll find one of the most reliably brilliant dining rooms in London. Fergus and Margot Henderson put the restaurant on the map in the Nineties (long before St John or Rochelle Canteen), and today the kitchen is helmed by Neil Borthwick, husband of Angela Hartnett, and a London food legend in his own right. The menu is compact, and skews classic French and British. So expect delicious fish, pies, perfect cuts of steak and lashings of butter. Get a table by the window, and save room for a tray of fresh-baked madeleines.
Mountain
- Cuisine: Modern European
- Location: Soho (16-18 Beak Street, W1F 9RD)
- Price: £££
- Mountain reservations
Chef Tomos Parry was blessed with a Michelin Star within six months of opening Brat, his Basque-meets-British restaurant in the heart of Shoreditch, so his second spot was always going to be a big deal. Thankfully, Mountain has more than lived up to the hype. Occupying an expansive two-floor corner plot on Beak Street, the menu echoes that of Brat, but with a little more destination-restaurant neatness. Menu highlights include the crab omelette, and the raw prawn and fresh cheese on toast – two dishes that still compete for Instagram supremacy – but Mountain’s prowess lies in its richness. Flame grilled steak, oven roasted rice, sweetbreads… tripe stew. Come hungry, order a vermouth and soda, and settle in.
Frog by Adam Handling
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Covent Garden (34-35 Southampton Street, WC2E 7HG)
- Price: £££
- Frog by Adam Handling reservations
Walking into Michelin-starred Frog by Adam Handling in Covent Garden, through a flower-festooned entrance that makes appropriate nods to the maximalist traditions of theatreland restaurants, the first thing you might notice is the staff. That’s of course because they’ll greet you at the door, but also because there are a lot of them, standing sentry around the dining room. In another establishment that might be overbearing, but the staff at Frog – or at least the ones Esquire encountered – are quite plausibly among the cheeriest and friendliest, not to mention most attentive, we’ve had. Which is good, because they have a lot to do: the softly hued restaurant serves an expansive tasting menu of teensy dishes of the most exquisite kind, from a crab tart with minuscule pastry crabs dancing on top of crystal jelly cubes (seriously!) right through to a cosmos of dainty chocolate spheres. You’ll lose track of quite how many beautiful things you’ve eaten (especially if you do the wine pairing) but that’s what phones, and, a take-home copy of the menu, are for.
Firebird
- Cuisine: Modern Mediterranean
- Location: Soho (29 Poland Street, W1F 8QR)
- Price: ££
- Firebird Reservations
If you happen to find yourself sitting at the kitchen counter at Firebird, the buzzy restaurant founded by Anna Dolgushina and Madina Kazhimova in the northern reaches of Soho, you’ll know exactly what their venture is all about. Here’s where you get the fully multi-sensory experience – the heat and light from the fire over which many of the dishes are cooked; the smell (and sizzle!) of chargrilling meat, fish and vegetables; and then, when your order’s up, the taste. Head chef Ben Munslow is making the most of Firebird’s fire-forward ethos, with dishes including glazed pork belly with date molasses and fenugreek and lamb rump with sumac red onions. The curtain-sided dining room is softly lit, the lab-coated staff are charming, and even on a Tuesday night the place is rammed. The heat, it seems is spreading.
Xi’an Impression
- Cuisine: Sichuan
- Location: Holloway (17 Benwell Road, N7 7BW)
- Price: £
- Xi’an Impression reservations
London’s cheap-but-brilliant restaurant quotient is gradually dwindling, but Holloway’s Xi’an Impression is one of the unmovable objects of the scene. A 30-ish-seat canteen right outside the main entrance to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, it focuses on Sichuan food (but not exclusively), offering impeccable hand-pulled biang-biang noodles, and a brilliant cucumber and sesame salad, amongst much more - the signature dish is Lianpi cold noodles, but the Xi’an beef bun is pretty special, too. It’s the kind of place that makes you question London’s whole food scene, asking why everything else can’t be just as good. And even better, it’s BYOB. Just be wary of match days.
KOL
- Cuisine: High-end Mexican
- Location: Marylebone (9 Seymour Street, W1H 7BA)
- Price: £££
- KOL Reservations
Was there ever a more cheerful chef than Santiago Lastra? The supremely talented Mexican, who came up through the ranks at esteemed restaurants such as Mugaritz in San Sebastian and Hija de Sanchez in Copenhagen before helping Rene Redzepi launch NOMA Mexico in 2017, seemed destined for greatness when he finally launched his own venture, KOL in May 2020. Lastra’s menu, prepared by an industrious team in an open kitchen, contains Mexican staples you might think you know: tostadas, tortillas, tacos; but these are masterful, exalted expressions of familiar dishes, containing things like langoustine, sea buckthorn and smoked chilli, or grilled octopus with bone marrow, potato and seaweed macha. Lastra’s food is experimental without being flashy, and though he brings in a few Mexican ingredients (chillis, corn, chocolate), he also champions British produce (beetroot! Cabbage!) that might not always be granted centre-stage.
Luca
- Cuisine: Modern Italian
- Location: Clerkenwell (88 St John Street, EC1M 4EH)
- Price: £££
- Luca Reservations
It often seems that restaurants have two choices when it comes to making a name for themselves: either be the buzziest, hippest, reservations-like-hen’s-teeth joint in town (for a few months at least, before the crowd moves on), or opt for a more subtle, refined sophistication and elegance that will keep you ticking over for the longer haul. Somehow, Luca performs that rare feat of combining both: with its airy, expansive dining room, perfectly judged lighting and terracotta-red and olive-green leather banquettes it feels effortlessly grown-up, but still has a youthful energy – and a lively bar area with all-important conspiratorial booths – that make it a place to be almost a decade on. Start with the parmesan fries which, given that they’re as light as an angel’s vapour trail, have garnered a cult status all to themselves. Then there are the antipasti, for which primarily British ingredients are treated with careful Italian flair, such as tartare of Hereford beef cured in Nebbiolo, or Orkney scallops with Jerusalem artichoke and ‘nduja. There are the primi, made in-house in a dedicated pasta room: the taglierini as light as angel’s tresses, conchiglie as delicate as a cherub’s ear… You get the idea.
Carmel
- Cuisine: Mediterranean
- Location: Queen's Park (23-25 Lonsdale Road, NW6 6RD)
- Price: £££
- Carmel reservations
From Josh Katz, the chef behind Berber & Q and Shawarma Bar, Carmel’s first iteration has been a Queen’s Park favourite since 2022. A second Fitzrovia outpost came and went, but the original, serving an east-Med array of flatbreads, salads, meze and mains to diners in W1, is still going strong. You can stop in for brunch, or a salad and a glass of wine at the bar, or settle in for a lengthy dinner of braised chickpeas and grilled urfa chilli chicken. The ricotta agnolotti is very good, and the single grilled "monster" king prawn, when it’s on, is not to be missed, if only for its bombastic name.
carmelrestaurant.co.uk/fitzrovia
Maison François
- Cuisine: French
- Location: St James's (34 Duke Street, SW1Y 6DF)
- Price: ££
- Maison François reservations
Maison François in St James's in Central London is a French bistro that gets the details right. It has free-flowing cornichons, the bread is good, the butter is soft and proudly salty and the list of sides features just three types of very well cooked potato. Ostensibly, the menu is classically French, with the likes of oeufs en gelée, moules marinière and jambon persillé, but it’s pared back, nuanced and not too heavy. The anchovy, ricotta and thyme on grilled bread, for example, is an astonishing feat of creaminess, punchy umami and crunch, and not the kind of thing you’d find on Parisian pavement table. The roving continues, and finishes, with the dessert trolley: a mobile selection of sweet things that range from the barely calorific to the exorbitantly decadent.
Toklas
- Cuisine: Mediterranean
- Location: Aldwych (1 Surrey Street, WC2R 2ND)
- Price: ££
- Toklas reservations
It’s always difficult for a restaurant to get the balance of cosy and chichi just right, but Toklas, around the side of the increasingly culturally pertinent 180 Strand building, has mastered the art. From its comfortable, spacious and perfectly lit dining room (dim, but still cheery) to a menu that is unshowy to look at but a delight to eat, Toklas has rightly earned a reputation as a low-key go-to for those in the know (as a case in point, on 0ne of Esquire’s visits, half of a very discerning electro double act was sitting at the next table). Its name, in case you’re wondering, comes from Alice B Toklas, the writer, counterculture icon and partner of Gertrude Stein, and perhaps the world’s most famous advocate of hash fudge (not on the menu, before you get excited). No doubt Alice, as a celebratedly modest art world figure herself, would have enjoyed at table in a quiet corner.
Mount St Restaurant
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Mayfair (41-43 Mount Street, W1K 2RX)
- Price: £££
- Mount St Restaurant reservation
Mayfair’s Mount St Restaurant is so immediately confident and accomplished you can’t believe it hasn’t been there for decades. In a light-filled room arranged around a central bar, with walls decorated with important modern and contemporary art — we spotted Freud, Matisse and Auerbach, just for starters — smart, experienced staff glide across the beautiful and dramatic mosaic floor (by the artist Rashid Johnson). The menu of modern British classics is appealingly plain-speaking and uncomplicated, but also playful and unexpected: how about mock turtle croquette to start, followed by pigeons in Pimlico? Crucially, it’s full of things you actually want to eat. On a recent visit, Esquire tucked into the restaurant’s much-loved, much-photographed lobster pie. At £120, it’s an investment but it serves two and comes with greens! Plus, that pie: generous chunks of Cornish lobster in a rich bisque, topped with buttery pastry. The wine list is long and comprehensive, but then so is life, if you’re lucky.
Restaurant Story
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Bermondsey (199 Tooley Street, SE1 2JX)
- Price: £££
- Restaurant Story reservations
A one-time public toilet at the wrong end of Bermondsey Street, chef Tom Sellers recognised the potential of a site nobody else had when he opened Restaurant Story in 2013. It won a Michelin star five months after launch — it now has two — and you can taste Sellers’s desire for greater and greater things in every dish he creates. He cooks with imagination, flair and whimsy over six- or 10-course menus that feature mainstays such as his signature beef-dripping candle, which is lit at the table for diners to mop up the meaty molten "wax" with some of the best bread in London.
Manteca
- Cuisine: Nose-to-tail Italian
- Location: Shoreditch (9-51 Curtain Road, EC2A 3PT)
- Price: ££
- Manteca reservations
In a world ever more stricken with moral dilemma, it is quietly thrilling to encounter a new restaurant that proudly puts meat at centre of operations. And not in the decadent, macho-carnivorous way that the barbecue craze did a few years ago, but with a care and respect and artisanship that inevitably transmutes into delicious, nuanced eating. Manteca, a casual new salumeria and Italian-inspired restaurant, established its nose-to-tail premise in a permanent space in Shoreditch after a successful pop-up in Soho. Go for a salad and glass of something cold at lunch or go with a gang and work your way through the menu. Just go.
Akoko
- Cuisine: Contemporary West African
- Location: Fitzrovia (21 Berners Street, W1T 3LP)
- Price: ££
- Akoko reservations
First of all, the restaurant itself – with its terracotta walls, warm mood lighting, well-spaced tables and wafting pop playlist – is up there with the most soothing places to eat in the capital, made all the more impressive by the fact that diners are in close proximity to the open kitchen. The staple foods of founder and first-time restaurateur Aji Akokomi’s West African heritage are transformed into finely tuned showstoppers by head chef Mutaro Baldé and his nine-course set menu (there is a shorter version available at lunch). The wine list is full of great options, or go for a cocktail glass of Nigerian stout to accompany the beautifully crafted, richly delicious small plates.
40 Maltby Street
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Bermondsey (40 Maltby Street, SE1 3PA)
- Price: ££
- No reservations
The year is 2026, you sigh. Surely we’re done with no-reservation restaurants? When the offering is as good as 40 Maltby Street, it’s worth making an exception. Known to many London chefs as the first choice for off-duty dining, this under-the-arches restaurant was born out of the wine warehouse Gergovie Wines, and with a bijou kitchen installed, they started slinging out small plates. The dishes are all scrawled up on the weekly-changing blackboard menu (take a photo to peruse back at your table), though that it’s all seasonal is a given: in the past we've enjoyed confit duck thigh on a chunky potato rosti with chard, pickled rhubarb, smoked trout with spring greens and pork schnitzel with celeriac and bacon gravy. No regrets.
Rambutan
- Cuisine: Sri Lankan
- Location: Borough Market (10 Stoney Street, SE1 9AD)
- Price: ££
- Rambutan reservations
The first restaurant from the highly regarded Cynthia Shanmugalingam, opposite Borough Market on the deliriously lively Stoney Street, is as confident and accomplished, and fun, as any fan of Sri Lankan food could have wished for. Fresh, fiery, with a cornucopia of culinary influences — Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian, Arabian, Portuguese, Dutch and British — the legacy of the island’s complex colonial history is reflected in her food. The room is appealingly decorated in post-colonial style, with rattan chairs, slow-turning ceiling fans and plenty of palm fronds, under which you might be able to enjoy a banana negroni; peppered watermelon; buttermilk fried chicken and pol sambol paan; incredible gundu dosas; red pineapple curry with mustard seeds; sticky chicken pongol rice; coconut, lemongrass and pandan dal. “Diaspora Sri Lankan cooking over an open fire,” is Shanmugalingam’s own description of the food on offer at Rambutan. It’s spectacularly good.
Rita's
- Cuisine: Modern American/seasonal British
- Location: Soho (49 Lexington Street, W1F 9AP)
- Price: ££
- Rita’s reservations
Come for the peppy jalapeño gildas, stay for the mini-Martinis and pretty much everything else on the menu. Gabriel Pryce and Missy Flynn’s restaurant has taken on many forms over the years (shout out to the fried-chicken-in-a-bag at Dalston’s Birthdays era!) but the latest incarnation in Soho’s Lexington Street feels like a perfectly fitting forever-home for this roving duo. Leaning into Pryce’s Americana/Mexicana kitchen history, the dishes now veer into seasonal British territory with thrilling results. Past favourites have included a whole grilled hake, with coco beans and a punchy macha pico, or the vegan-that-you’d-never-guess-was-vegan burnt tomato fregola with saffron, olives and capers. Flynn continues to make a name for herself as one of the smartest in the UK’s drink game, with bang-on impeccable taste. There's a short but sweet selection of natural wines on the list, but don’t leave without having an eponymous Rita cocktail.
Café Cecilia
- Cuisine: Modern European
- Location: Hackney (32 Andrews Road, E8 4FX)
- Price: ££
- Cafe Cecilia reservations
Café Cecilia popped up in a nondescript canal-side building round the backend of Broadway Market in the summer of 2021, and has arguably become the real star of the area. That’s very much down to the head chef, ex-River Cafe’s Max Rocha – also son to Irish designer John Rocha – who’s managed the tricky task of creating both a casual neighbourhood restaurant that’s also a firm favourite with the high-fashion, creative set. The monochrome design of the cafe (very definitely not a ‘caff’) is pleasingly ‘80s in style, but there’s no doubt that the menu is anchored firmly in the 2020s: modern European small plates that boast seasonal produce. Rocha’s Irish heritage shines through with his signature Guinness bread and butter (get ready to sink it as quick as a pint), while the black stuff rears its welcome head again in the desserts by way of the Guinness bread ice-cream, its evolved form even more delicious than the original. While there’s a strong bent towards veggies at Café Cecilia – delica pumpkin with cavolo nero, butterbeans and labneh being a tasty recent dish – the meat plates are worth a visit in themselves: tender leg of lamb served with rich pommes anna and anchovy, while the classic onglet with peppercorn sauce and chips is a long-stayer on the menu for a very good reason.
Moro
- Cuisine: Spanish / North African
- Location: Farringdon (4-36 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QE)
- Price: ££
- Moro reservations
The restaurant that launched a thousand dinner parties, Moro was the first and last word in bringing the heady world of rich Spanish and Moroccan food to Blighty. Married couple Sam and Sam Clark opened up their Exmouth Market restaurant back in 1997, which promptly won Time Out's best new restaurant, and still remains a super-popular dining choice for Londoners – and visiting out-of-towners – more than two decades later. Like Ottolenghi, there'll always be one ingredient you'll need to ask the patient waiting staff to explain, but the new discovery will no doubt be delicious. Revelatory dishes for us over the years have included the orange and green chilli-steamed mussels with mograbieh (see? It's a type of Lebanese semolina pearls, like couscous, FYI) or the chargrilled lamb with sumac and fava bean puree. The restaurant pivoted to tapas in 2010 when they opened the Barcelona-inspired Morito next door, and carried on the trend with a second Morito outpost in Hackney in 2016. As the Sams have aptly demonstrated, there's always room for more Moro.
Min Jiang
- Cuisine: Chinese
- Location: Kensington (2-24 Kensington High Street, W8 4PT)
- Price: £££
- Min Jiang reservations
High up on the 14th floor of the Royal Garden Hotel with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Kensington Gardens, Min Jiang has one of the best restaurant views in central London. Tables at dusk are the plum booking, to watch the sun set over plates of wood-fired Beijing duck served every which way. Dim sum is the ideal way in, made by a chef who’s been practising the art for half century. Duck follows next, where the crispy skin arrives with a bowl of finely granulated sugar for dipping, before pancakes and a hoisin sauce rich with orange and floral notes. Guests then have a choice of having the duck flesh pulled through hand-rolled noodles or served with rice. Neither disappoint.
St John
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Farringdon (26 St John Street, EC1M 4AY)
- Price: ££
- St John reservations
Less a culinary hotspot, more a British food institution, St John – through its gregarious founder, chef Fergus Henderson – pioneered the nose-to-tail revolution around the turn of the millennium. Put simply, it chides carnivores to not just enjoy the prime-cuts of animals, but to get stuck into the then less-fashionable other bits: liver, heart, sweetbreads, tripe. This is where the trend for bone-marrow on sourdough toast was born, and the kitchen has birthed a slew of other reinventions that now appear on menu's throughout London. Favourites on the menu are unsurprisingly not suitable for veggies: robust slices of grilled ox heart, say, with beetroot and green sauce, or a delicately crumbed veal cutlet served with chicory and anchovy. Handily set just around the corner from London's Smithfield meat market, and housed in a former smokehouse, the classy and traditional restaurant never feels fussy or pretentious – it just keeps things ever simple by literally going the whole hog and offering high-quality food, excellent wines and outstanding service to every guest.
Plaza Khao Gaeng
- Cuisine: Thai
- Location: Arcade Food Hall (103-105 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1DB)
- Price: ££
- Plaza Khao Gaeng Reservations
There’s no way of writing this down without sounding insufferably gap yah, but sitting in Plaza Khao Gaeng, with its wooden ceiling, strip lights and photographs of Thai royalty on the walls, does make you feel like you’re in roadside joint in Bangkok. Probably more than the lighting and the décor though, is the food, from chef Luke Farrell, whose knowledge and fascination with the cuisine and produce of southeast Asia is played out in dishes that are punchy and uncompromising in a very good way (a feat he replicates in a more conspicuously trendy setting at his more recent opening, Soho’s Speedboat Bar). From dishes such as Gaeng Massaman Neua (a deep, rich curry of beef shoulder with potatoes and shallots) to Pad Phet Pla (sea bream cooked with chillies, lime leaves and “jungle herbs”), this is a restaurant – and a chef – that knows exactly where it’s going; the imminent new branch in Covent Garden being a case in point.
Padella
- Cuisine: Italian
- Location: London Bridge (6 Southwark Street, SE1 1TQ)
- Price: £
- Padella reservations
No barbs about carbs here – pasta is well and truly back on the menu, and we've got Padella to thank for a nation binning off any faddy ideas about Keto or Atkins diets. Opening in 2016 on the fringes of Borough Market, it's had a queue outside for just about as long, as fans have no qualms about waiting up to two hours for a plate of its signature thick and cheesy pici cacio e pepe. The petite, two-floor venue – from the same team behind Trullo in Highbury – is an Italian monochrome dream inside, with the best seats being the stools at the marbled bar upstairs, where you can watch the dexterous chefs create the pasta by hand. The quick turnover and cheap prices make it essentially an Italian noodle bar, so this isn't the spot for a long, lazy lunch. Instead to grab plates like ravioli of Westcombe ricotta and sage or the tagliarini with Dorset crab, lemon and chilli; snap your photo for Instagram and dig in. Keep things fresh with a sparky rosemary lemonade and, pronto, it’s time to give up your seat for the next salivating customer in the queue.
Kiln
- Cuisine: Thai
- Location: Soho (69 Brewer Street, W1F 9TL)
- Price: ££
- Kiln reservations
One of the greatest things about living in a city with around 40,000 restaurants is chance to experience more than just a sweeping generalisation of a nation's cuisine. For Kiln – the buzzy Soho bar, where the seats are set just inches away from the fragrant food being tossed around on smouldering hot coals – the specialty is regional Thai, specifically where the country borders Burma, Laos and Yunna. Kick off with some snacks-on-skewers starters, chunky spiced bites of aged lamb and cumin skewers, or a complex northern Isaan sausage, courtesy of co-owner and chef Meedu Saad. Remaining a constant is the already iconic clay pot, which arrives steaming full of glass noodles, with chunks of Tamworth pork and sweet brown crab meat embedded within. That the smell lingers on your clothes afterwards is only a good thing – you'll be dreaming of the noodle dish for days afterwards anyway.
The Palomar
- Cuisine: Middle Eastern
- Location: Soho (34 Rupert Street, W1D 6DN)
- Price: ££
- Palomar reservations
A Soho favourite for close to a decade, Palomar made the cuisine of contemporary Jerusalem, served with relish in a noisy, bustling, joyful room just south of Shaftesbury Avenue, into one of the undisputed gems of the London dining scene. The menu, which offers food from the region where the Middle East meets North Africa and Southern Spain (it is both Moorish, and moreish), does breads and dips (kubaneh, labneh, hummus), plus open fire cooking: we have very fond memories of tangy za’atah chicken schnitzel, followed by glazed octopus, fiery lamb cutlets, skewered vegetables with a date glaze and a carafe of white from a list distinguished by wine from the land, as they put it themselves, of desert and dune: Morocco, Israel, Lebanon. For an hour and a bit, a grey and grimy London day was transformed into a honeyed afternoon in the holy city.
Core by Clare Smyth
- Cuisine: Modern British
- Location: Notting Hill (92 Kensington Park Road, W11 2PN)
- Price: £££
- Core by Clare Smyth reservations
When Clare Smyth cut the apron strings after eight years helming Gordon Ramsay’s three-star Michelin restaurant, the dining world knew her next move would prove something special. Within several weeks, Core became one of the best restaurants in the capital and has accrued a pair of Michelin stars after just two years in operation. Her style is fine-dining British, but defines luxury in a different way. She elevates humble ingredients, imbuing time and love for plates such as potato and roe, where the basic spud takes centre stage among two types of fish roe (neither of which are caviar).
